The one that matters

It's nearly 40 years since the first World Cup humdinger, but those who were at Edgbaston for it continue to be amazed. West Indies were 203 for 9, with 64 still needed, in a group match against Pakistan when a bareheaded Andy Roberts joined Deryck Murray. The rest of the team had given up. "We were all getting changed," says Gordon Greenidge. "We didn't expect Andy Roberts to stay so long."

Clive Lloyd remembers his accountant, Gordon Andrews, walking into the dressing room with a crate of pale ale, saying he had put £50 on a West Indies win. "We were 66 to 1 to win," says Lloyd, shaking his head, bemused. "And we kept drinking the pale ale as the overs went down. Got to 30 [to win]. Then got to 20… I drank so many pale ales, I'm sure I was oblivious to what was happening."

A continent away, the writer and broadcaster Fazeer Mohammed, then a ten-year-old schoolboy in Port-of-Spain, sat in maths class, distracted. "Huddled around those precious radios, the crackling commentary from what seemed a world away had us all hypnotised," he wrote more than 30 years later. "Anyone daring to voice his doubt at the miracle being achieved was banished from sight. All hands, whether sweaty or trembling, had to be on deck for this one, even from across the Atlantic."

Roberts hung in there. "And just milk it, milk it, slowly, slowly, until the last two overs, when we needed about ten. And I hit a boundary, and from there on I knew all you had to do was get bat to ball." When he struck the winning runs, pandemonium broke out in the dressing room. "Men with years of cricket experience were jumping up and down and hugging each other," Lloyd would say many years later. "Some were sobbing uncontrollably."

There is a charming postscript too. The match adjudicator, Tom Graveney, had retired to a bar when the eighth West Indian wicket fell at 166 and returned just in time for the presentation. Not knowing the result, he announced Sarfraz Nawaz was the Man of the Match.

None of this might have occurred exactly as the players remembered. Maybe some of Lloyd's team-mates believed Murray and Roberts could sneak them through. Maybe Lloyd's accountant was joking about putting money on a West Indian win. Maybe Graveney saw some bits of the climax and still chose Sarfraz for the match award. Memories blur over time, tales are embellished, and little falsehoods grow into full-blown legends. But it's stories like these - concealed under the scorecards and match reports, hidden in YouTube clips, pieced together from first-hand accounts, and revived every four years - that make the World Cup so endearing.

No other cricket tournament - not the Champions Trophy, not the World T20, not the IPL, definitely not the Champions League - inspires anywhere near the mythology of the 50-over World Cup. The four-year gap whets the appetite. Each tournament carries weight. There have been 352 World Cup matches but few have been forgotten. Even seemingly obscure games leave an impression.

India's match against Sri Lanka in the 1992 World Cup, in Mackay, was abandoned after just two balls, yet a recent discussion on Twitter brought forth memories of Kapil Dev walking out to open the batting for the first time in an ODI. He finished on 0 (0).

The memorable wins are awash in nuggets. There is Wasim Akram, who, after Pakistan qualified for the semi-final in 1992, wrote a note to a taxi driver in Christchurch saying Pakistan would win the World Cup. There is Ravindra Pushpakumara, the 12th man in the 1996 final, who was under so much stress that he couldn't get himself to deliver the intended messages to the batsmen. And there is the Indian team in 2011, their breakfast orders mixed up on the morning of their semi-final against Pakistan and their lunch not served on time because the hotel staff were busy attending to VIPs.

Fans go beyond wins, though. They mull over defeats and reimagine scenarios. Many Indians who watched MS Dhoni strike the ball into orbit in 2011 would also have experienced the agony of the one-run defeats against Australia in 1987 and 1992. They might have cursed their captain for fielding first against Sri Lanka in 1996, and been deflated by Ricky Ponting's mighty onslaught in 2003. Each defeat, each heartbreak, would have made the triumph that much sweeter.

If this is your first World Cup, you are about to watch the best one of all

"A sad fact of human existence is that an average life seldom contains more than twenty World Cups - our games are tragically numbered."

The writer and novelist Aleksandar Hemon said this about football, but the sentiment is universal. Each World Cup takes one back to a different stage of life, each serves as a personal signpost. Back in 1987, as a six-year-old pestering his grandfather with questions about the rules of the game, I asked how Graham Gooch could "sweep" the ball when he had no broom in hand. A few days later I was even more confused when my grandfather cursed Mike Gatting for playing the "reverse sweep".

Five years later, hooked to cricket, I was convinced the 1992 World Cup was the greatest thing on television. It was the first World Cup with coloured kit and floodlights. The gigantic stadiums in Australia made it look larger than life. There was Eddo Brandes the chicken farmer; David Boon the wicketkeeper; Javagal Srinath's yorker to Javed Miandad; Richie Benaud's rain rule… And those banners! "75% of the earth is covered by water, the rest by Jonty Rhodes," said one. "Germany, Korea, and Allan - vanishing Borders," said another.

Over the next two months many ten-year-olds will watch their first World Cup. Like me in 1992, some will experience the thrill of waking up early in the morning to watch their team. Or maybe they will stay up late at night. Some will watch the games at the ground. Some, like Fazeer in 1975, will listen to them on the radio (in maths class). They will count down the days to their team's next match. Maybe they will save photos off social media as phone wallpapers. Or memorise scorecards and stats. Irrespective of who wins, it's a tournament they will never forget.

This issue of the Cricket Monthly celebrates the thrill of World Cups. There are stories from almost every tournament, from writers around the world. Dylan Cleaver revisits Mark Greatbatch's impact in 1992, and Rahul Dravid looks back to the summer of 1999. Russell Jackson puts Collis King's devastating 86 in context. Tom Eaton explores the myth about South Africa choking in World Cups. Jonathan Liew wonders if England will ever be ready to win a 50-over title. Ahmer Naqvi doffs his hat to the inimitable Shahid Afridi. Ricky Ponting opens up on one-day batting. And four writers tell you which was the best World Cup. But don't believe them if this is your first World Cup. You are about to watch the best one of all.

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan is a writer based in the USA

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